Green Arrow: Rebirth

Don’t think I’ve ever done a write-up for a single issue of a comic book. But this #1 of Green Arrow / Rebirth—it earns that ‘rebirth.’ First, of course, I didn’t at all see the last Percy arc of Green Arrow going off the rails in any way. I mean, if anybody’s going to appreciate a werewolf-thing happening, right? Mix some Slade in, and I’m jimmying the lock on the local comics shop on Tuesday night.

But, this new GA, man. It’s firing on all cylinders. If you’re looking for a solid write-up, this’ll definitely do.

As for what so worked for me? I never even realized I had something near a fetish for dialogue balloons without the outline. But, doing it like that, it flattens everything out in a way that’s very cool:

This, with the coloring, is doing something kind of . . . kind of like what Hawkeye did when Fraction and Aja were on it. And past them as well, some. It’s a really controlled . . . something, I don’t know. Color-talk always loses me fast. But I know when it works. And it’s working here, double-time, and it’s somehow syncing up with the line-less balloons to make these pages just something to study, and appreciate.

Also, I like Ollie looking like the Ollie in my head:

Troubled, that signature fancyboy goatee, and something just generally “moneyed” about him, I guess I’d say.

Also, my favorite panel/sequence, it’s almost immediate:

Why I excise this one to show, it’s . . . do you see that bad guy kind of BEHIND the tilted/jarred panel? What this does is show that the bad guy was doing one thing, but then suddenly, oops, there’s something else going on. It’s such competent layout. So impressed. When the comic book medium is really working, this is how it works. Also, on this page? Things are so rapid that the gutters are all slammed tight—there’s no time for that kind of delay-action, that kind of savoring.

Wonderful.

And of course, Benjamin Percy and Otto Schmidt know comic book grammer, so all the page-turns and splash pages &etc are clicking as they should, as we, being close readers, just expect. But: it’s nice to be in competent hands. And it’s so, so nice to close this first issue out on a cliffhanger that’s monstrous, that makes it impossible not to hold your breath for the second installment.

Which is to say: if you see a shadowy form hunched over the door handle of a certain local business here in Boulder, just keep walking. I’ll leave some cash on the counter, promise.